If you haven’t heard the recent news, Yahoo! decided to ban telecommuting and is now forcing all employees to physically come into the office to work and if they can’t or won’t then they can find a job elsewhere. At first glance this seems a bit counter intuitive to what many other companies are doing. Here we have organizations such as TELUS, Lowe’s, Electronic Arts, IBM, and many others around the world who are implementing collaborative tools and strategies to enable a more connected and engaged workforce with flexible environments; and then we have Yahoo! that is telling everyone that they now need to come into the office to work.

“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo, and that starts with physically being together.”

While I do agree that collaboration and communication are crucial I don’t believe that being in the same office necessarily drives that. In fact in an article I wrote a little while back I took a look at how distance impacts collaboration. The visual below shows that once employees are around 160-200 feet apart that communication virtually ceases to exist altogether.

I also haven’t seen any specific studies which say that speed and quality of work is sacrificed by allowing and supporting employees to work from home. In fact in the article I mentioned above I found research to show quite the opposite. However, it’s not hard to find some stats and research online to support any position you want to take. I believe that Mayer’s reasoning behind this sounds a bit “old-school.” Many of the companies I work with are actually taking the exact opposite approach of what Mayer is suggesting. Collaboration, communication, and innovation can be accomplished through remote working with the proper use of social and collaborative tools and strategies. Chess Media Group alone has put together many case studies on collaboration which show this.

It’s interesting because the stock price of Yahoo! has actually been doing quite well. I think what we are seeing on the surface vs the actual deeper reasoning behind what Mayer is suggesting are very different. As far as I know Yahoo! hasn’t implemented any type of social collaboration solution (which also means no training, education, adoption strategies, etc). I think what Yahoo! is really trying to do here is just regroup and get everyone back on the same page in order to build a successful framework and approach for collaboration. It seems that this was never done to begin with which is a problem. If the foundation was never set in place for building a collaborative organization then Yahoo! now needs to stake one step back in order to take two steps forward later. I don’t think and can’t imagine this being a permanent change over at Yahoo! Perhaps there was just certain issues with specific teams or groups over at the company and a blanket policy was issued in an attempt to try to rectify that. The truth is we really don’t know why Yahoo! is doing this.

What I can say is that the smart and progressive companies who are looking at the future of work are investing heavily in social and collaborative tools and strategies to build a connected, engaged, and smarter workforce. The research exists to support doing this as do the case studies and examples. I really hope (and am trying to believe) that Mayer’s reasoning for forcing everyone to come to work goes beyond what she said in her quote, and I think it does.

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Principal of Chess Media Group, a social business consultancy. Jacob works with mid and enterprise organizations on developing customer and employee engagement strategies. He is also the co-author of Twittfaced, a social media 101 book for business. Jacob authors a Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 blog.

2 responses to “Why Did Yahoo! Ban Telecommuting for Employees?”

I have worked in all the various combinations of workplaces: 100% onsite, 100% offsite, remote from Canada for a US Corporation, 2-3 days/week from home with 2-3 days/week in the office, etc. I have found that it is important have BOTH onsite work time and offsite work time, as onsite yields much better collaboration, while offsite allows you to focus like nothing else, and also is more comfortable. Marissa is obviously trying to make a “culture shift” happen, without actually coming out and saying it, so that’s why she wants 100% onsite – for now. I am willing to bet that she relaxes this position, after Yahoo! has made a fundamental shift in 6-12 months, and people better understand how to work in teh “New Yahoo!” world…

The only work I see getting done in the collaborative environment is large groups of people having power-point slides being read to them…if you like playing with your phone during hours long meetings about something you don’t need to know…this is your day…if you are a coder..you must be the one of the ones that had the stereo and video game on while you were doing your homework in middleschool…the only saving grace is that WiFi is so good I can sit with my laptop under a tree outside and work…